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The Interface

Many 3D programs are very intimidating to new users because of either too many buttons or almost no options initially visible. In Rhino, the interface almost as familiar as opening up a word document. You are greeted with the typical open, save, copy, paste, etc. tool bar as well as a few others. Most of the tools are built around the idea of what it looks like is what it probably does. Add this to the command line up top and you are left with a very easy initial introduction to the interface.

The quickest way to learn in Rhino is through both exploration and testing. The command line features something similar to Google's predictive text technology. You start typing, and anything that begins with the letter "C" for instance will drop down and you can see all the commands that start with the letter "C".

If the command line and the tool buttons aren't enough, you can always point your cursor up to the top menu bar and access any of the tools from the top and work that way.

Whenever I install a fresh copy of Rhino, I like to open up a couple other windows. Layers and object properties. These two windows act as both navigational aids and information windows about your model.

With the Layers window, you can turn layers on and off, lock them, change line types, colors and a myriad of other options that will help you determine which layers are which. You can even rename the layers and create sublayers (these act like layer groups) to keep things more organized.

The object properties window is your other really important window. When you select an object, it will tell you what sort of object it is, what it's comprised of, materials, etc. It is kind of like the project manager of Rhino that has all the information right when you need it.

Zooming, Panning, and Orbiting

To start discussing navigation with the camera, you should really memorize these three simple hotkey combinations:

Right Click + Drag = Orbit

Right Click + Shift = Pan

Right Click + Ctrl = Zoom

To navigate 3D space, you must understand the camera that you are looking through. The 3 hot key combinations above will allow you to navigate the 3D space so you can see your model from every angle. When you are moving the camera around, it might initially feel like you are moving around your model.

If you've ever worked in an image editing software like Photoshop or Painter, you may be well aware of the importance that the zoom and pan tools offer. Likewise, the orbit tool enables you to fly around your model and see it from all sides.

Now that we have the camera and interface out of the way for now, let's talk about the tool bars and what does what.

The Toolbars

The main two toolbars, conveniently titled "Main1" and "Main2" are broken down essentially into objects and object modifiers.

With these two tool bars, you can perform just about all of the critical operations you need to perform without much searching. The icons do what they look like they do, e.g., the button icon of circle makes a circle. Some of the tools have a little arrow in their bottom right corner. If you click and hold on this, it will expand that tool to show some additional options. For example, by clicking and holding on the circle button the image to the right will appear.

These tools all enable you to draw the circle in various ways. Likewise, all of the other icons that have expandable menus such as this, offer additional ways to create shapes. This is very useful because sometimes you'll need to draw a shape in a way other than the default (typically the default prompts you to pick a point, then drag out to another point to create your shape.)

Remember, when I mentioned the command line? If you get stuck, just type it out what you think the command you might be thinking of is called, and Rhino will drop down the possilble commands that it could be (assuming you're calling it by the correct starting letter.) If that doens't help, you can always press F1 or go to the menu bar and click on "help" to find addtional answers.

Tomorrow night, we will discuss the viewports and construction planes. Stay tuned.